A bizarre bounce cost Queenslander John Senden any faint chance he had of winning the Wyndham Championship today.
Coming off a birdie at the 12th hole, Senden's drive at the par-four 13th landed on a sprinkler head in the middle of the fairway, bounced hard left and did not stop until it had almost crossed the out-of-bounds line.
"I've never seen that before," said the 2006 Australian Open champion.
"It was a weird thing, so I wasn't too upset. My ball finished near some trees and I didn't have a second shot and I ended up making bogey."
Despite that bad break, Senden, who shot a closing four-under-par 66 at Sedgefield, was still satisfied to finish equal sixth, his best result since March.
As it turned out, he would have needed a miraculous round of 60 to tie Swedish winner Carl Pettersson, who finished with a tournament record low score of 21-under 259, two strokes ahead of American Scott McCarron.
"I struck the ball really nicely and putted solid, holed some really nice putts today," added Senden.
"I know I can do a lot better. My game is there. I just need to stand on the stage and let it go."
Senden, the only Australian to finish in the top 25, takes some good form into this week's Barclays Championship, the first event of the US PGA Tour's four-event play-off series.
Senden is one of 15 Australians who have qualified to be part of the 144-man field.
Pettersson, meanwhile, recovered from a mid-round stumble to claim his third tour victory in his adopted home state.
He bogeyed the 10th and 11th holes to fall behind McCarron, but roared back with birdies at the 13th, 15th and 16th holes to claim an emphatic victory.
"I was letting the tournament slip away on 10 and 11," said Pettersson, who moved to North Carolina at the age of 15 when his father was posted here on a job transfer.
Pettersson is the second Swede to win the tournament, following Jesper Parnevik's 1999 victory
